Or the same region. I mean, in the 50s of Marilyn Monroe it were tits that ruled. In this century, the hip region was partly what made Kim Kardashian a visual icon.
robert sapolsky's a primate's memoir is one of my favourite pieces of nonfiction writing, documenting his time studying a troupe of baboons over twenty years. i stil have trouble even describing the various antics he got up to to dart the baboons without laughing too hard to get the words out, and i like it so much more than his later works!
there's another observation that he made about these monkeys that this essay reminded me of. baboons, according to sapolsky, also build networks of alliances to try to take down the alpha of the troupe. they'll get half a dozen guys who over the course of various clandestine midnight meetings all agree to jump the king at the same time, and obviously six baboons is more than sufficient to beat up one stronger than average baboon. still, the conspiracy fails quite often, because when the big moment comes, the baboons lose their nerve and start defecting. mostly, everyone scatters. sometimes, everyone except one or two baboons scatter, and those one or two baboons get really beat up. rarely, enough baboons do not scatter, and they successfully pull off a coup.
i could be misremembering, but according to sapolsky, i dont think the defectors really get punished by the other guys in the conspiracy, the baboons sort of just take it as a fact of life that yeah you can handshake on some great deals, but when the big moment comes many will panic and lose their nerve, thems the breaks of being a baboon.
i think that's really interesting. it kind of makes me curious to if there's any sort of limitations like that for humans, and to what extent it would be helpful to make those explicit, and try to extend grace towards those that fail at certain tasks just because they cannot actually control their biology. as a culture, we kind of take it as a given that people can control all their bodily urges by the time they turn 25, but i think this obviously isn't true upon further reflection. (i write a bit more about this at https://jenn.site/2024/03/how-strong-is-your-monkey-brain/)
and i guess, along those lines - to what extent can people control their urge to play status games? what does like, 5th percentile control look like, and 95th percentile control? how wide's the spread? does it get better or worse if status and status games are talked about openly, like it is in certain nerdy subcultures? much to consider :)
This is thoughtfully written and well researched, but for someone who feels put upon by outdated morality, it is quite interesting how much personification is written into to this, as well as morality. Violence, Rape, dominance, sex, are all meaning producing words as humans. We observe primates, but without an understanding of their language, we donāt know what the meaning they make things mean? I think you might enjoy studying the Lakota Siouxā¦ they were traditionally a matriarchal society. (White man disrupted that) Their case study would, perhaps, show you more data and fit more in line with what it seems like you were after. They had language that we can understand and we can understand what meaning they attached to sex and power dynamics. There is also a group of people in northern Russia that is a matriarchal societyā¦ were guests are offered to stay and have sex with the women as a way to encourage group healthā¦ the āhusbandā is made to leave and will stay and raise any children as their own. I understand how valuable correlating animal and human behavior is to understanding human behavior, but the meaning we attach to the morality of it has me struggle, because without the meaning attachment, we can only speak to the behavior, not the psychological.
Itās safe to assume that when an ape screams when attacked, theyāre saying āow that hurts, please stop.ā Avoiding pain/suffering is at the root of our moral reasoning
I'm not sure. Did you hear the interview aella did with the slutstack girls? One of them described being taken to a room and fucked by a guy and another person who was there was disturbed by the scene. Presumably because she was struggling and screaming, though I'm not exactly sure. But when she told the story, she assured us she was thoroughly enjoying herself.
Iām not sure either, but hereās my guess: In the case of the apes, itās raw and unadulterated non-consent. In the human case, itās consensual non-consent. I presume we inherited this fetish from our ape ancestors, but the apes lack the metacognitive ability to be kinky
Yeah, hard to say. The video of the orangutan "rape" that was linked in this article didn't look that traumatic. I went and looked up clitorises in other species after reading this and all mammals have them, including the ones discussed here. So if they work anything like ours, they may very well get pleasant physical sensations and maybe even orgasm?
Also, you couldn't tell from videos of human rape how psychologically traumatic they are, so you shouldn't expect videos of nonhuman rape "look that traumatic".
No, I tend to go with a person's word. Some may appear to not enjoy but actually enjoy (CNC) while others may orgasm during rape, which is still very much not ok. Much harder to discern with animals though, hey?
I guess. I am not a primate behaviorist. What about the studies of trees grown in an environment devoid of wind and lack of resources. They become weak and brittle. Using avoidance as a moral structure is a sure fire way to damage the chances for survival. How about those who triumph over adversity? Are they not some of the strongest among us? Happiness is not sustainable, nor is suffering. I agree that our legal/moral system was based on protecting the injured party. We do not know what primates base their morals on, except their behavior might say power and sex are intertwined. Not from a moralistic perspective, but from a place of social order. The stronger will always have control. Stronger physically or stronger from intellect. Is that right? I cannot say for primates, but it is just what is so.
I donāt think apeās actual psychology or morality matters. The overall point here is that humans share similar behaviors, so itās useful to overlay human morality on the ape behaviors
Yes. I understand that premise. Humans, as far as we know, are the only ones who assign systems of morality. For most of the animal kingdom, the fittest are the ones who survive. I am not saying she is wrong. I said it is well researched and well written.
i think that "getting beaten up all the time" and "daily risking death at the hands of the most violent asshole around when displaying insufficient abject submission" are both bad ways to live no matter your species.
It sure seems that way As a human that would be the worst environment to grow up in for sure. We humans actually have cultures in parts of the world that daily ārisking deathā, is part of their reality. Many species, in the animal kingdom, violence is their natural state of being. We do not know how they have internally adapted to live that life. We can attach human morality to it, but we cannot be sure what it means in their worldā¦ Primates are our closest genetic relative, and it makes sense to compare. I think it is a super thoughtful pieceā¦ the question is and will remain, we can only speculate, from observation, what that behavior means to them?
i'm pretty sure that, given the choice to get out of the horrible equilibrium they're in, many would take it. like we humans do. like yknow, Aella, just for a totes random example
I think her piece was well researched and well written. Her hypothesis attaches a lot of human traitsā¦ thatās all. As far as what primates prefer? Or assigning āhorrible equilibriumā is a denial of all basic power structures. Nature is far more powerful than all of us, we live at its leisure. The physically powerful or intellectually powerful will always have the advantage. That is the basic premise of primate and human society. Attaching morals, is what the weak might sayā¦ Suffering is being in an argument with reality.
One survives or one doesn't survive. One perpetuates one's group - or does not. It seems clear to me that morality as human A, B, or C understands it only has meaning in the material world if the requirement of existence is met. Ergo, it's not necessarily important what great apes think of their social systems and strata - for us to understand how the genes spread and continue on or die out.
I'd add, a Siberian Lakota Sioux is obviously not a great ape. While great apes are unarguably intelligent creatures, I'd agree with the comment "when an ape screams they're saying "ow that hurts, please stop" - in general. There's been enough research, a lot of it completely heartbreakingly unethical (like Project Nim undertaken by the Jewish psychologist Herbert S. Terrace at Columbia University, where the Frankfurt School was set up in the early 20th century) I'd add further that the Lakota Sioux displaced several other Siberian American tribal nations - in ongoing battles for their own group ascendancy and dominance of resources. Just like Native European "White man."
Human societies have more similarities to ant hives than any of the great apes. Are we really bonobos or really chimps, no, we are more like insects in the ways in which we organize ourselves. Also, while maximizing offspring and access to females may be an aspect of status, especially in certain cultural contexts, it is not necessarily the end-all-be-all of status. Plenty of European monarchs had plenty of status, and maybe even multiple partners, but no harems. Even where you had harems, court eunuchs often had high status and called the shots in the Dar Al Islam and China in various periods. Plus, sex is great and all but in a figure like Alexander the Great, a lot of the marriages were undertaken purely to cement political ties, not necessarily out of desire or the need to leave 60 heirs.
Have you read The Descent of Woman, by Elaine Morgan? I'm not sure what the current scientific consensus is on her views, but she tells an interesting story about how we got here from there.
In a word, unlike the other primates, our pre-human ancestors spent a lot of time bobbing in the ocean, an environment that favored a bunch of adaptations.
Elaine Morgan popularised the aquatic ape theory of human evolution, which has been completely rejected by scientific consensus. In 2003, Morgan basically admitted that her book was unscientific and that she freely made things up to fit a particualr narrative.
Informative summary and commentary. Just like to add a nerdy clarification, however - chimps and bonobos are technically apes, not monkeys (as implied at the end of your entertaining article).
So hey, is there some kind of evolutionary justice where female bonobos learned to cooperate to gang up on bad males and thus got the power, whereas female chimps instead competed for the king's attention, thus becoming slaves?
I'm unsure about these points about gorillas (not central to the argument):
> Theyāre harem-prone, roam around in little bands made out of one dominant male and a bunch of females. Sometimes thereāll be more than one adult male, but those are clearly subordinate and usually his sons.
>As a note, direct physical violence within gorillas and orangutans is relatively rare
I've seen mountain gorillas in the wild and have seen a group with 3 adult males (IIRC at least 2 silverbacks) who were fighting out their position at the time (and according to our guides that has been going on). One of them had fresh wounds (nasty-looking, but likely not dangerous).
There might be differences between different regions or subspecies.
Cool. I had a thought. Hiding estrus (no swelling aka humans) and prolonged estrus will give the same result. That being males are unsure of paternity and thus reduces infanticide. So bonobos and humans are more alike in that sense.
Very interesting - thanks. And gives a small insight into humans - we are basically an evolved ape but we have put societal limitations on how to behave. Of course, some humans will disregard those limitations (they would be called sex offenders!).
> Iām also super grateful human women never evolved sexual swelling
We did! It just evolved in a different region because we walk upright. š
yum yum sex
Or the same region. I mean, in the 50s of Marilyn Monroe it were tits that ruled. In this century, the hip region was partly what made Kim Kardashian a visual icon.
robert sapolsky's a primate's memoir is one of my favourite pieces of nonfiction writing, documenting his time studying a troupe of baboons over twenty years. i stil have trouble even describing the various antics he got up to to dart the baboons without laughing too hard to get the words out, and i like it so much more than his later works!
there's another observation that he made about these monkeys that this essay reminded me of. baboons, according to sapolsky, also build networks of alliances to try to take down the alpha of the troupe. they'll get half a dozen guys who over the course of various clandestine midnight meetings all agree to jump the king at the same time, and obviously six baboons is more than sufficient to beat up one stronger than average baboon. still, the conspiracy fails quite often, because when the big moment comes, the baboons lose their nerve and start defecting. mostly, everyone scatters. sometimes, everyone except one or two baboons scatter, and those one or two baboons get really beat up. rarely, enough baboons do not scatter, and they successfully pull off a coup.
i could be misremembering, but according to sapolsky, i dont think the defectors really get punished by the other guys in the conspiracy, the baboons sort of just take it as a fact of life that yeah you can handshake on some great deals, but when the big moment comes many will panic and lose their nerve, thems the breaks of being a baboon.
i think that's really interesting. it kind of makes me curious to if there's any sort of limitations like that for humans, and to what extent it would be helpful to make those explicit, and try to extend grace towards those that fail at certain tasks just because they cannot actually control their biology. as a culture, we kind of take it as a given that people can control all their bodily urges by the time they turn 25, but i think this obviously isn't true upon further reflection. (i write a bit more about this at https://jenn.site/2024/03/how-strong-is-your-monkey-brain/)
and i guess, along those lines - to what extent can people control their urge to play status games? what does like, 5th percentile control look like, and 95th percentile control? how wide's the spread? does it get better or worse if status and status games are talked about openly, like it is in certain nerdy subcultures? much to consider :)
Fun fact, the ball size (relative to body weight) is proportional to the amount of sexual competition too! For obvious evolutionary reasons
This is thoughtfully written and well researched, but for someone who feels put upon by outdated morality, it is quite interesting how much personification is written into to this, as well as morality. Violence, Rape, dominance, sex, are all meaning producing words as humans. We observe primates, but without an understanding of their language, we donāt know what the meaning they make things mean? I think you might enjoy studying the Lakota Siouxā¦ they were traditionally a matriarchal society. (White man disrupted that) Their case study would, perhaps, show you more data and fit more in line with what it seems like you were after. They had language that we can understand and we can understand what meaning they attached to sex and power dynamics. There is also a group of people in northern Russia that is a matriarchal societyā¦ were guests are offered to stay and have sex with the women as a way to encourage group healthā¦ the āhusbandā is made to leave and will stay and raise any children as their own. I understand how valuable correlating animal and human behavior is to understanding human behavior, but the meaning we attach to the morality of it has me struggle, because without the meaning attachment, we can only speak to the behavior, not the psychological.
Itās safe to assume that when an ape screams when attacked, theyāre saying āow that hurts, please stop.ā Avoiding pain/suffering is at the root of our moral reasoning
I'm not sure. Did you hear the interview aella did with the slutstack girls? One of them described being taken to a room and fucked by a guy and another person who was there was disturbed by the scene. Presumably because she was struggling and screaming, though I'm not exactly sure. But when she told the story, she assured us she was thoroughly enjoying herself.
Often female chimps will sustain physical wounds in a way that is not true of the slutstack girls.
For sure, and when a woman really gets raped, it's extremely traumatic. It just may be difficult to tell the difference sometimes.
Iām not sure either, but hereās my guess: In the case of the apes, itās raw and unadulterated non-consent. In the human case, itās consensual non-consent. I presume we inherited this fetish from our ape ancestors, but the apes lack the metacognitive ability to be kinky
Yeah, hard to say. The video of the orangutan "rape" that was linked in this article didn't look that traumatic. I went and looked up clitorises in other species after reading this and all mammals have them, including the ones discussed here. So if they work anything like ours, they may very well get pleasant physical sensations and maybe even orgasm?
Also, you couldn't tell from videos of human rape how psychologically traumatic they are, so you shouldn't expect videos of nonhuman rape "look that traumatic".
No, for sure. Often they do though. You seen/heard koalas?
Some rape victims report that they orgasmed, so orgasm isn't indicative of consenual sex.
No, I tend to go with a person's word. Some may appear to not enjoy but actually enjoy (CNC) while others may orgasm during rape, which is still very much not ok. Much harder to discern with animals though, hey?
I guess. I am not a primate behaviorist. What about the studies of trees grown in an environment devoid of wind and lack of resources. They become weak and brittle. Using avoidance as a moral structure is a sure fire way to damage the chances for survival. How about those who triumph over adversity? Are they not some of the strongest among us? Happiness is not sustainable, nor is suffering. I agree that our legal/moral system was based on protecting the injured party. We do not know what primates base their morals on, except their behavior might say power and sex are intertwined. Not from a moralistic perspective, but from a place of social order. The stronger will always have control. Stronger physically or stronger from intellect. Is that right? I cannot say for primates, but it is just what is so.
I donāt think apeās actual psychology or morality matters. The overall point here is that humans share similar behaviors, so itās useful to overlay human morality on the ape behaviors
Yes. I understand that premise. Humans, as far as we know, are the only ones who assign systems of morality. For most of the animal kingdom, the fittest are the ones who survive. I am not saying she is wrong. I said it is well researched and well written.
i think that "getting beaten up all the time" and "daily risking death at the hands of the most violent asshole around when displaying insufficient abject submission" are both bad ways to live no matter your species.
Sounds a bit like school! And even more like Lord of the Flies.
It sure seems that way As a human that would be the worst environment to grow up in for sure. We humans actually have cultures in parts of the world that daily ārisking deathā, is part of their reality. Many species, in the animal kingdom, violence is their natural state of being. We do not know how they have internally adapted to live that life. We can attach human morality to it, but we cannot be sure what it means in their worldā¦ Primates are our closest genetic relative, and it makes sense to compare. I think it is a super thoughtful pieceā¦ the question is and will remain, we can only speculate, from observation, what that behavior means to them?
i'm pretty sure that, given the choice to get out of the horrible equilibrium they're in, many would take it. like we humans do. like yknow, Aella, just for a totes random example
I think her piece was well researched and well written. Her hypothesis attaches a lot of human traitsā¦ thatās all. As far as what primates prefer? Or assigning āhorrible equilibriumā is a denial of all basic power structures. Nature is far more powerful than all of us, we live at its leisure. The physically powerful or intellectually powerful will always have the advantage. That is the basic premise of primate and human society. Attaching morals, is what the weak might sayā¦ Suffering is being in an argument with reality.
fuck nature, tho. why would i accept that? it's natural to die of smallpox, yet we eradicated it.
Good luck with that! Nature always has the last word. Always.
One survives or one doesn't survive. One perpetuates one's group - or does not. It seems clear to me that morality as human A, B, or C understands it only has meaning in the material world if the requirement of existence is met. Ergo, it's not necessarily important what great apes think of their social systems and strata - for us to understand how the genes spread and continue on or die out.
I'd add, a Siberian Lakota Sioux is obviously not a great ape. While great apes are unarguably intelligent creatures, I'd agree with the comment "when an ape screams they're saying "ow that hurts, please stop" - in general. There's been enough research, a lot of it completely heartbreakingly unethical (like Project Nim undertaken by the Jewish psychologist Herbert S. Terrace at Columbia University, where the Frankfurt School was set up in the early 20th century) I'd add further that the Lakota Sioux displaced several other Siberian American tribal nations - in ongoing battles for their own group ascendancy and dominance of resources. Just like Native European "White man."
Human societies have more similarities to ant hives than any of the great apes. Are we really bonobos or really chimps, no, we are more like insects in the ways in which we organize ourselves. Also, while maximizing offspring and access to females may be an aspect of status, especially in certain cultural contexts, it is not necessarily the end-all-be-all of status. Plenty of European monarchs had plenty of status, and maybe even multiple partners, but no harems. Even where you had harems, court eunuchs often had high status and called the shots in the Dar Al Islam and China in various periods. Plus, sex is great and all but in a figure like Alexander the Great, a lot of the marriages were undertaken purely to cement political ties, not necessarily out of desire or the need to leave 60 heirs.
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2020/01/of-ants-and-humans-some-principles-of-social-organization.html
Have you read The Descent of Woman, by Elaine Morgan? I'm not sure what the current scientific consensus is on her views, but she tells an interesting story about how we got here from there.
In a word, unlike the other primates, our pre-human ancestors spent a lot of time bobbing in the ocean, an environment that favored a bunch of adaptations.
Elaine Morgan popularised the aquatic ape theory of human evolution, which has been completely rejected by scientific consensus. In 2003, Morgan basically admitted that her book was unscientific and that she freely made things up to fit a particualr narrative.
Damn! It was a fun theory.
Informative summary and commentary. Just like to add a nerdy clarification, however - chimps and bonobos are technically apes, not monkeys (as implied at the end of your entertaining article).
i just really like the phrase 'monkey facts'
monkey facts indeed
If monkeys are defined as a monophyletic group, then that group must include apes, meaning that chimps and bonobos are both apes and monkeys.
Thanks! So interesting.
So hey, is there some kind of evolutionary justice where female bonobos learned to cooperate to gang up on bad males and thus got the power, whereas female chimps instead competed for the king's attention, thus becoming slaves?
There is a great book on this topic called chimpanzee politics: https://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Politics-Power-among-Apes/dp/0801886562
I did read this yes!
I'm unsure about these points about gorillas (not central to the argument):
> Theyāre harem-prone, roam around in little bands made out of one dominant male and a bunch of females. Sometimes thereāll be more than one adult male, but those are clearly subordinate and usually his sons.
>As a note, direct physical violence within gorillas and orangutans is relatively rare
I've seen mountain gorillas in the wild and have seen a group with 3 adult males (IIRC at least 2 silverbacks) who were fighting out their position at the time (and according to our guides that has been going on). One of them had fresh wounds (nasty-looking, but likely not dangerous).
There might be differences between different regions or subspecies.
1. Neat and frightening
2. Monke
āAll the other males she had sex with are now less likely to kill her infant, because thereās a chance it might be theirs.ā
Interesting, a prototype of ādo unto others..ā
Cool. I had a thought. Hiding estrus (no swelling aka humans) and prolonged estrus will give the same result. That being males are unsure of paternity and thus reduces infanticide. So bonobos and humans are more alike in that sense.
Fascinating post. I always find your writings to be fun and interesting and hope you continue.
Great read. Thanks for this.
Very interesting - thanks. And gives a small insight into humans - we are basically an evolved ape but we have put societal limitations on how to behave. Of course, some humans will disregard those limitations (they would be called sex offenders!).